Writing a blog post can be daunting...

Where do you start?

How do you keep your ideas organized?

What do you write to keep the reader’s attention?

And where do you find readers to begin with?

If you want to write a share-worthy blog post but are stuck staring at a blank screen—today is your lucky day.

In this guide, I’m going to show you how to write a killer blog post in three simple steps (I’ll even write a post along with you!)

Feel free to copy any of my ideas to get your creative juices flowing.

Let’s dive in.

Step 1.) Research Your Topic & Build a Skeleton Outline

Ok, so I’m going to assume you already have a topic to write about (if not, try this title generator).

For our example, we’re going to write a post called How to Score Housesitter Jobs and Travel for Free.

Our first step is research.

We need to figure out…

• Who we are writing to
• What they want to know
• How they are searching for information on Google

In this case, the “who we are writing to” is pretty self-explanatory—budget travelers who want to learn how to get free accommodation.

To figure out what they want to know, let’s use common sense to brainstorm some ideas. Open up a Google Doc and start brain dumping:

Depending on your topic, you might need more than just common sense. That’s where our good ol’ friend Google comes in.

Search for your topic, scroll to the bottom, and look at the related search terms Google recommends...

When I searched for “house sitting”, Google suggested these terms.

If any of these suggestions fit within your topic, include them.

It’s also a good idea to check what is already ranking in Google for your topic.

For example, when I search “how to become a house sitter”, most of the results include a section that lists out the different house sitting memberships you can join:

We should probably add this to our article too.

Alright, at this point we have a pretty comprehensive brainstorm list…

Now let’s narrow it down into a skeleton outline.

Think of a skeleton outline like your table of contents.

Some of the points we listed earlier will become subheadings. Other points can be combined and covered underneath these subheadings.

Our goal is to include subheadings that hit on ALL the topics a noobie housesitter would be interested in.

Be careful not to add in information that doesn’t fit within our title, though. We want to stay as focused as possible.

Here’s what I came up with:

Once I finalize my skeleton bullets in a Google Doc, I change the bullets to subheadings. So before I start writing, my page looks like this:

Now, we’re ready to write!

Step 2.) Write An Awesome Article

The secret to writing an awesome blog post (and writing it fast) is to break the process into two parts…

#1.) Brain dumping

#2.) Polishing

Let’s start with brain dumping.

There are no rules here.

Just brain dump everything you can think of to fill in each section of your outline.

For now, don’t worry about making it sound good. The goal is to get all your thoughts out onto the doc.

You don’t even have to go in order.

If you’re stuck on the intro, skip to whichever section looks the easiest to dump in.

If you’re writing in one section and an idea pops in your head for another section. Go ahead and switch.

If you get stuck on a sentence, just type in a placeholder (like _______) and keep going. You can fill it in later.

The less you censor yourself, the faster you’ll finish.

Next up is polishing your post.

This is basically taking your dump and putting it through an editing checklist.

It’s the stage where you add the “finishing touches” that will make your post stand out.

One way to do this is to add images.

In our post, we list out seven housesitting tips for beginners. This is a good opportunity to make a helpful image, like this:

I made this in Canva using one of their free infographic templates. It took 10 minutes.

The best part is, we’ll be able to reuse this image later in Step 3 (Promotion). And if we’re lucky, it may even attract some backlinks!

Another easy way to level up your blog post is to add specific examples.

Whenever you make a claim or talk about theoretical ideas, add in an example.

FOR EXAMPLE (see what I did there?), in our post, we talk about house sitting responsibilities.

Instead of being vague and just saying “it depends on the assignment”, I included what our schedule was actually like:

Examples like this help make abstract ideas more tangible for the reader.

The last easy way to make your article awesome is to add actionable advice.

You want the reader to finish your article with specific actions they can use to apply your ideas to their life. This can be as easy as adding in an “Action Step” callout box at the end of each section in your post.

Our house sitting post is chock full of practical advice.

We don’t just talk about how cool housesitting is or how it can theoretically save you money on accommodation. We show them the EXACT steps we used to do it!

Before hitting publish, always polish your post by adding images, examples, and action steps.

Step 3.) Promote the Crap Out of Your Article

So far we’ve worked hard to put together a killer blog post. But our job doesn’t end there.

Now we have to get it in front of eyeballs.

That means promoting it all over the interwebs. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, email...

Everywhere.

It sounds overwhelming, but we’ve already done most of the work.

All we have to do is break off “chunks” of our post and re-use them on social (ideally 5-10 snippets).

For example, we already made that pretty infographic. That can go on Pinterest and Facebook.

You can also take a photo from your post, add a quick caption, and send it off to Twitter.

I copied most of this text right from my article introduction.

You could even tweet out a screenshot of your main points.

And if you’re REALLY serious about getting eyes on your post, consider turning your it into a Youtube video. Then embed the video inside your article, and share that on social media as well!

Making a video isn’t as scary as it sounds. If you’re not comfortable on camera, just throw together a quick Powerpoint, record your screen, and read through your post.

Here’s an example of Neville doing it for Copywriting Course:

Adding video not only makes your article more valuable, but it can drive traffic to your blog from Youtube as well.

As you can see, promoting your blog post doesn’t need to be complicated or time-consuming. Just use what you already have!

How to Write a Blog Post Cheatsheet

Hope this helps make your next blog post a big hit!

Sincerely,

Mitch Glass